Accounting for Modalities

Morning at PDX

Planes wait to takeoff from the tarmac at Portland International Airport in late February, 2015. (Photo by Bill Lascher)

Beijing West

Passengers prepare to board trains headed from Beijing, China to the city of Chonging. (Photo by Bill Lascher)

Stairs

One of the many stone stairways traversing the Chinese city of Chongqing. (Photo by Bill Lascher)

Tramway View

The twin towers of the gold-clad Sheraton Hotel in Chongqing, China, as viewed through thick haze from the city's cross-Yangtze tram. (Photo by Bill Lascher)

Star Ferry

Detail of rigging on Hong Kong's Star Ferry with city lights visible in the background. (Photo by Bill Lascher)

Jeepney

One of the iconic "jeepneys" of the Philippines capital, Manila.

Sidecar

The view from a motor tricycle sidecar on the Philippines island of Mindoro. (Photo by Bill Lascher)

Ferry passage

A northwest-bound ferry as seen from another, southeast-bound ferry passing between the Philippines islands of Mindoro and Panay. (Photo by Bill Lascher)

Given that many people in the United States are thinking about accounting today, I thought I'd share some of the raw numbers from my recent trip to China and the Philippines, but rather than detail how much money I spent (speaking of which, you are welcome to complicate my 2015 taxes by donating here), I thought I'd share the following summary of the many journeys within a journey I took while traveling through China, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Macau, the Philippines, Canada and the United States:

Feet shredded while walking miles through eleven cities, many small villages, one former military stronghold and atop, along and around ruined portions of a gigantic wall: 2

Subway systems used more frequently than can be tallied: 6

Personal cars ridden with a buddhist who would later host an elaborate tea ceremony, an atheist tour guide raised in a cave, and two precocious children: 1

Bridges crossed at which the largest conflict in the history of the world began: 1

Last minute rickshaw rides organized by a guide squeezing in one more sightseeing visit before a thirty-hour train ride: 1

A thirty-hour train ride between China's current capital and the city that served as its capital during World War II: 1 

Taxi trips: 17

Flights: 11

Airport tramways and buses: 2

City bus systems: 3

Trains at normal speed: 2

Sleeper cars upgraded to after riding in crowded coaches: 1

Monorails not in Brockway, Ogdenville or North Haverbrook because by gum it put them on the map: 1

Light rail systems: 4

Subway rides cut off by construction: 1

Alleyway stairs climbed and descended: ∞

Walks through the rubble of destroyed ancient neighborhoods: ≥ 4

Paths cut through crowds of cruise-hawking street vendors in search of urban planning museums that turn out closed and impossible to find despite their focus on planning: 1

Ropeway trams crossing China's longest river:1

Cabs packed with an old calligrapher/musician, an absent-minded poet and a former magazine publisher bringing you to the calligrapher's underground studio filled with beautiful artifacts: 1

Trips on high speed railways so new they don't yet show up in online rail guides: 4

Train stations visited so recently constructed that they are miles away from any construction and surrounded by dirt parking lots: 1

High speed train café cars ridden in because railway conductors snuck me through heavy police state security despite incorrect ticket date: 1

Provincial minibuses blasting techno: 1

Dirt streets walked in a town that was the birthplace of the leader of a 19th century rebellion that led to 20 million deaths: ≥3

Spontaneous scooter rides to a destination found despite language barriers by showing digitized stills of eight-decade-old 16mm film to strangers in a streetside dentist's garage exam room:1

Makeshift three-wheel vans shared with a Chinese man who wants to show off his English language skills to an American: 1

Wood-paneled minibuses: 1

Pedestrian border crossings surrounded by hard-selling counterfeit clothing retailers: 1

Alleyways packed with citizens of seemingly every country in the world drinking and dancing outside of generic bars: 3

Double-decker buses precariously perched on a beautiful island road in a former British colony: 1

Double decker street trolleys: 2

Street performances led to by a retired American chiropractor swigging a glass of red wine aboard one such trolley: 1

Inexpensive night ferries filled with tourists gazing at the neon skyline of a bustling global city: 1

Ferries between Chinese special administrative regions: 2

Casino buses used as transport to or from the historic core of a former Portuguese colony: 2

Municipal airport shuttle buses ridden while seated backwards: 1

Buses boarded by women who preach in Tagalog for the last phase of a trip to a ridgetop resort above a volcanic lake: 1

Inexpensive and colorful, if crowded, jeepneys: 3

Inter-city buses playing weird, staticy melodramatic sci-fi: 1

Taxis whose drivers unsuccessfully try to claim broken meters or broker special “deals” that are twice as much as a normal fare: ∞

Claustrophobically overcrowded metro rail lines in overly congested island nation capitals: 1

Ferries to or from former World War II fortresses: 2

Park concessionaire tour vans ridden as the only member of the tour and rushed through even though the rider would have been happy tagging along with the tour following his: 1

Island jeeps whose drivers invite pedestrians on sun-blasted landscapes to hitch up a hill: 2

Lengths swum across a pool improbably placed on the site of aforementioned island fortress: 20

Jungle paths blindly wandered down as monkeys and geckos screech in surrounding trees: 3

Gigantic underground wartime tunnels explored: 1

Stretches of dry field chased across by monkeys: 1

Wifi-enabled buses playing Zero Dark Thirty as they crossed beautiful, rain-drenched tropical scenery: 1

Ferries ridden across darkened waters as lightning flashes all around during the dead of night: 1

Motor-tricycle sidecars ridden to crummy hotels: 1

Tricycle back seats: 1

Intercity vans accompanied by stuffed crabs: 1

Tricycle sidecars ridden to remote beach villages the rider knows from viewing the same town in photographs taken by wartime journalists fleeing pursuit by enemy forces: 1

Uneventful island van rides while staring lazily at the scenery: 1

Six-hour long ferry rides that were two hours longer than advertised and spent barefoot in the sun, staring at the sea and an island that once sheltered journalists on the run: 1

Terrifying late night rides across Philippine islands without seatbelts in the center front seat of a van driven by a guy texting half the time as he speeds wildly, despite rain, windy roads, roadwork and oncoming traffic, all of which is accompanied by his crooning to 70s and 80s power ballads and his crossing of himself each time his vehicle passes a church: 1

International flights taken while coming down with crippling food poisoning: 1

Passport control and customs lines waited in while convinced vomiting will commence immediately: 1

Epically long taxi rides with said food poisoning lingering, but driven by a man who compliments the rider on his Mandarin, even though in reality it is quite poorly spoken: 1

Passport controls where the traveler's home country's border officials give far more trouble than those of other nations: 1

What were  your favorite journeys within a journey? How many different modalities do you tend to use when you travel? Where do you hope to transit between next? Let me know in the comments!

Chongqing Aflame

I woke to bursts of fireworks this morning. The New Year began only a short time before I arrived in China and the country's Spring Festival has yet to end, so I've learned such a sound doesn't merit particular note.

But this is Chongqing. Here, when I turn down an ancient alley and hear the blasts and pops I can't help but imagine the sounds Mel heard while he was here. The sound is so common that it surrounds, that it seems a part of the landscape. In fact, experienced one way, Chongqing is the most sensual city I've ever visited.

Beyond the fireworks, you hear Chongqing in honking horns, sizzling streetside frying pans and screams of Sichuan from every direction. At night, before your eyes, Chongqing's bright lights dance up skyscrapers, the same towers that shoot from fields of strewn rubble and half-buried buildings, far past the smog-smudged apartment blocks they're replacing. Chongqing's scent wafts from grilling meats and fetid alleys. The taste of Sichuan peppers and the tingle of Má Là numbs your lips while you seek respite for calves strained from climbing interminable stairs and feet sore from wandering meandering alleys.

Though this sensation permeates, so too does its absence. Chongqing flows between tidal extremes, from noise to silence, movement to stillness, energy to calm.

And, as I write, so return the fireworks, as they have done and will again. I wonder: do they mean something more here, where they pepper and blast the sky in ways far longer and more varied than they have elsewhere? I wonder:  Am I hearing the past?

Ducking the Elephant in the Room

The day takes shape slowly. Getting out the door just happens. Once you do the bus is ten minutes late. Then, so is the MAX, but you don't mind. You've been quietly extricating yourself from time. You wait in the chill beneath an interstate, listening to teenagers gossip. Staring at the spikes lining the steel beams beneath the roadway you think perhaps a bit too long about pigeon deterrence.

Boarding the wide slick new cars of the Green Line, you laugh occasionally at a Wait Wait Don't Tell Me podcast and take another stab at the crossword you started two days prior. Disembarking in Lents, you pass a crop of green, swirling, solar panel-topped sculptures, walk beyond cold, new planters toward Foster Road and gaze on Lincoln's giant face on the side of the New Copper Penny.

This landscape is neither foreign nor familiar, a domestic banlieue swept to the edge of the green movement's model city.

The mission is murky at best. You walk west under another freeway, looking for a well-reviewed video game merchant you found online. It's not clear why you went this far. You don't play games often enough to make them a destination, though you suspect the entire point was to ask just such questions. Wedged next to a 7-11, the store is smaller than you imagined, as cluttered and cramped inside as the clamoring chaos of the intersection between which it's squeezed. A man lingers at the counter, trying to squeeze pennies from the business as he sells old games. There are too many people in the store. Despite nostalgia stirred by the pile of old NES games all you want to do is leave. Asking a quick question of the clerk, he assumes you're there to make a trade and for some reason won't look in your eyes when he talks with you. Nothing in the store interests you enough to make a purchase.

Not quite ready for lunch, you head the other way beneath the freeway to see if you can find some sort of treasure to justify the journey. Past a barber shop and tiny antique shop and a handful of businesses closed for the weekend, all you can see in the distance is a long road.

You turn back toward the MAX line, but can't ignore a taqueria down a side street. Inside, fake pepper and onion and garlic plants line the ceiling. Elephant statues raise their trunks from every surface behind the counter. They're outnumbered only by ducks. Rubber ducks. Ceramic mallards. Wooden drakes and plastic hens. Ducks. Everywhere.

Everything else is as traditional as taquerias seem anywhere. Staticy TV stations play spanish-language music videos. Hand-written specials fill a dry-erase board. A dozen bottles of hot sauces and salsas sit on the edge of every table. The red, white and green of the Mexican flag on the wall mirrors the facade's paint job.

You make your order quickly, and simply. Tacos. One pollo, one pastor, and one cabeza.

You sit down at a middle booth, ponder discoveries and road trips and that burning itch to travel. When you pull from your bag the latest issue of Harper's, it opens to an excerpt from a writer who spent five weeks in residency at London's Heathrow Airport. He describes arrivals. Expectancy. The cultural filters thousands of us pass through each and every day. Crunching tortilla chips and hot salsa you sink into the words, wishing you wrote that way, or that you could be there, documenting the everyday, spinning it into lush, rich language.

A family comes through the door, led by a girl of no more than seven hobbling on a cane. She's dwarfed by the boisterous entry of her oversized relatives. They settle into the larger table in the middle of the room. You find yourself inching away as one sits near you, the slightly unpleasant odor of her exhaustion hitting your nostrils just as your meal arrives.

Embarrassed by your quick judgment, you let the discomfort pass and eavesdrop on their cheerful Saturday afternoon conversation. They plan errands. The mother recalls a long-passed uncle's favorite foods. The boys and girls chirp. A man, a boyfriend or brother or son, sits at the head of the table and doesn't utter a word. Not one. The women talk about an 18-year-old niece's thwarted hopes to hire a male stripper. The $150 cost of the house-call is too high and she's too young to go to the 21-and-over club in town with male exotic dancers. Mother and daughter and aunt discuss the situation as the younger kids laugh and joke, oblivious. It doesn't seem anything is resolved, except the family's decision to include tacos with breaded fried beef in their order.

You sprinkle a little too much habenero sauce on top of your second taco, the chicken. A middle-class couple walks in. The woman is cute, blonde, maybe mid-30's and wearing a long, knit sweater-jacket. Her partner is about the same age, with a meticulously cropped red beard around his chin and a tight, pastel green t-shirt from another Northwestern metropolis. They ponder the menu and make their orders. They're loud, somehow more so than the sum cacophony of the family, which somehow seems to have gained even more members in the fifteen minutes or so they've been in the restaurant.

You turn your attention away and sip your lime Jarritos. A waiter offers more tortilla chips. Though you decline, on each of your remaining five or six you carefully dab a few drops of a different sauce to find just the right one for your last taco. The name of the favorite escapes you now, but you sprinkle it carefully on the taco, only a touch so as not to overpower the pork.

Taking a bite, you sit back in the booth and notice another herd of elephant figurines in the corner.

Los Angeles in Your Eyes

What is Los Angeles?

How do you answer that question? Unlike perhaps any city in the United States, Los Angeles is definitionless. Some might even apply Gertrude Stein's famous statement about Oakland, that “there is no there, there,” to Los Angeles.

What I find so interesting though, is that there are, in fact, so, so many here's, here. My question for readers: How do you share these here's with others? How do you define Los Angeles for visitors, for out of town family, for distant friends?

I've been wondering this for months. If a friend were to visit from out of town, what kind of tour would I give her or him, especially if we only had a short time to explore?

Northwestern Inspiration

Please excuse a touch of digressive background before my call for L.A. tour ideas. Though I've been thinking about this post for a long time,  a recent trip to the Pacific Northwest finally inspired its composition. Though astute readers of Lascher at Large know my feelings about Portland — feelings only reinforced this last visit — they might not know this was my first trip to Seattle. As a vacation it was wonderful. My traveling companion and I rode the train to the Emerald City and explored with little rhyme or reason and scant attention paid to time's constraints.

Instead, we experienced the city on our own terms, at our own pace. We had a late breakfast in Queen Anne. We lingered in the splendid Olympic Sculpture Park and loved it so much we happily returned the next day at the end of a stroll through the pouring rain. We sampled salted caramels beloved by Barack Obama and eschewed overpriced omelettes in favor of straightforward but unbelievable fish and chips and chowder from Jack's during our breakfast visit to the Pike's Place Public Market. Some friends scooped us up and enlisted us in a trivia challenge over beer in Wedgwood (We can proudly boast we helped our friends to victory and a free pitcher for their next visit). We strolled down Pike Street from Capitol Hill to Downtown, dodging gamers attending Pax as we chowed on streetside crepes (food played a major role in this vacation, as it should in any) before stopping for fantastic martinis at an eclectic Downtown bar and grill.

My point here, though, isn't to recount every minute of our weekend. Instead, it's to note how subconsciously we took Seattle in. Though we know we didn't see nearly the entire place, I think we can both agree the sheer bliss of wandering semi-aimlessly delivered a sense of the town's rhythm.

Could a visitor have a similar experience in Los Angeles? Certainly, its sheer size might inhibit a weekend visitor from ever knowing this place. Then again, what if a visitor to Los Angeles accepted that they weren't going to see it all, that they never could, that even those of us who live here will never fully understand this place? What if they just let go and enjoyed seeing what they could see?

Your L.A. Tour

I've been wondering this for months, as I've also been wondering what it would be like to share this place with friends and loved ones from out of town. How would I do it? What would I show them? In what order would I show it to them? How could I even begin, knowing what I must be leaving out?

How would you give a tour of Los Angeles with only a short time to do so? What would you show? Why? What do you think is quintessential L.A.? What can be ignored? Do you have a universal trip you'd share with every visitor or are there certain ones you'd reserve for certain people? Would there be a specific flow to your tour?

Would you use the strict geographical boundaries of the city, or would yours be more a tour of Southern California with Los Angeles as its center of gravity? If you've had visitors, tell some stories of the tours you've taken them on. List a few places that have to be visited. Give a sense of the route you'd take, of how one might move between landmarks and why you'd go that direction, why you'd take that path.

If you're not from Los Angeles, what would you want to see here if you only had a few days to do so? What is this place to you? Why would you want to visit? What type of tour would you want?

Spread the word about this post. I'm not just looking to crib some ideas for when visitors come to town, but I think the discussion that could occur here would offer a look into the myriad images society has of LA. Please share this post with your friends and get them involved. I imagine the conversation that might ensue will be indicative of the variety of neighborhoods and populations and landscapes and experiences that only can be had here.

Why I care

I represent the fifth generation of my family to live in this city, though, unlike previous generations, I wasn't raised here, but 60 miles and a world away in Ventura County. Though I'm not yet convinced it's my permanent home, I'm a great defender of this city. I react strongly when those who haven't been here rail against its supposed faults, or when those who have extrapolate one negative aspect to explain the entire town.

Where New York City is often depicted as the center of the world, L.A., even with the California Dreaming, even with the starlets hoping to make it big, seems consistently portrayed as a broken, soulless, placeless place. Yet, beneath its surface millions of places coalesce to become Los Angeles, millions of paths lead through the city, layering one on top of another. Though it can exhaust even the most focused mind to make sense of the knotted, scattered landscape, the patient will uncover gems both buried in the most distant corners of Los Angeles and shimmering in the bright glare of starlight.

Such facts might be true of any city — really, of any human experience — but at this moment I'm asking you to dissect L.A. and offer up your discoveries. Doing so is not a new endeavor. Nevertheless, how would you share Los Angeles?

Some of my own ideas

To get things started, here are a few ideas of the Los Angeles I might share, though these are some of the more obvious suggestions and there are so many gems I know I'm leaving out (specifically in the Valley, South L.A., the South Bay, and East L.A. — so give me your ideas from these neighborhoods):

• A Los Angeles Conservancy walking tour of Downtown architecture followed by lunch at Grand Central Market

• A bike ride from Santa Monica to Venice Beach

• An afternoon lazily strolling around Vermont and Hillhurst Avenues before catching the sunset, and maybe a planetarium show at the Griffith Observatory

• A ride on the Gold Line to Pasadena (and to East L.A., whenever the extension opens)

• Watching the city transition along its spine on the Wilshire Rapid 720 Bus

• Stopping over at the LA River Visitor's Center

• Biking to Heliotrope and Melrose for dinner at the Pure Luck Restaurant followed by ice cream at Scoops

• A walk around the Silverlake Reservoir before a meal on Hyperion, Silver Lake Blvd. or Rowena and a show at Spaceland

• Riding the Red Line to Hollywood on a Sunday for the Farmer's Market and some touristy wandering

• Oaxacan lunch — including fried crickets and a michelada — at La Guelaguetza

• A lazy Saturday afternoon on Larchmont

• Catching a film revival at the New Beverly Cinema before a late night nosh (especially dessert!) at Canter's

• $2 PBR at the Shortstop before a Dodgers game (p.s. I'm no hipster -- despite the PBR and Echo Park, Silverlake and Los Feliz references)

• Bar-hopping Downtown at the Edison, Cole's, the Hotel Figueroa and the Library bar, to name but a few stops

• Wandering through LACMA before a dinner in Little Ethiopia

Those are but a few of my ideas. What are yours?

P.S., who wants to buy me tickets to this?

Landings

Lately I’ve been thinking a tremendous amount about places I’ve been, places I am and places I may be going. Since Friday I’ve been in Portland, Oregon. While here, I’ve had the opportunity to connect with a number of old friends, beloved members of my family and a city I am finding so full of meaning to me, even though I've only lived here a few months. Yesterday morning I drove along Lombard Street. Stopped at a light where Lombard intersects with Albina, I pondered a craft store in a small house on the north side of the road. A large shingle hanging in the yard read “Yesterday and Tomorrow.” From the road I could see through the windows to view what looked like vases and sculptures and other knick-knacks, but the store’s name and the fact the sign featured a dragon (See postscript) made it hard not to think it catered to lovers of fantasy novels and science fiction. I thought of Renaissance Fair fans and Trekkies and how the two groups share a category somewhere in my brain.

Something dawned on me. Fans of these genres spend so much of their entire lives concerned with either what has been (in a loose sense, since we’re talking about fantasy), or what might be (as fanciful as such visions may be constructed). I don’t say this out of judgment, for I admittedly enjoy a great deal of science fiction and the odd medieval-themed book or movie. Still, it’s an unsettling thought. What about the beauty of the present?

I’d rather not delve into a cultural/literary critique, especially because I don’t want to discount the power and beauty of imagination. Nonetheless, these thoughts arose as I’ve pondered the intersection of my own present with my past and future. Here in Portland this week I’ve seen how so many paths have intersected. I'm always awed as I drive East and West by the 10 bridges spanning the Willamette River, and only now am realizing that Portland itself has been the backdrop for so many transitions across my own life.

Over the past year I’ve flown into this city three times. There’s something about landing here that stirs a tremendous amount of nostalgia. When I land in Portland, it feels like home. I understand where I am. I see where I’ve been. It feels like a real arrival, unlike any other city I’ve been to. It makes a certain amount of sense. Whether it’s mist dancing through City Center skyscrapers or bursts of green splashed across the outskirts of town, everything seems to fit together. Certainly, Portland isn’t quite the emerald masterpiece it’s cracked up to be. Like most American cities, Portland displays the scars of sprawl. As I landed, I saw huge swaths of recently-sprung developments. From the air, the foreclosure signs and anxious faces that surely populate many of the capillary-like cul-de-sacs were invisible. All I could discern were patches of conformity spreading around the city. Visible evidence of turn-of-this-century greed that left this and all of America reeling.

It’s so jarring, because on the ground Portland proper, if not its suburbs, swirls with the pot luck attitude of a true community, although strong, valid critiques exist of redevelopment within the city as well. Far more than any place I’ve been in the United States except perhaps, as a matter of fact, the original Portland, this is a self-determined city, including the blemishes of its modernity.

As I land and swirl through so many past worlds of mine, I remember I can move about the city without thought. However, I’m still constantly discovering more beneath Portland's surface. The only time I ever had a similar sensation was at my five-year college reunion last year, and that feeling was aided by the presence of so many others who had experienced that period of my life with me. But where the grounding I find among my undergraduate peers is most firmly rooted in a mindset, there seem to be physical roots here in Portland.

It’s strange as well because if my sense of home has something to do with the experience of landing in a city, I’d imagine my ties to L.A. would be stronger. Where I can count the number of times I’ve flown into PDX on my fingertips, my journeys to and from LAX are innumerable and stretch back to my youngest days. But the meaning carried by a descent into Los Angeles is far different, likely because until last summer I had never resided there. I’m still forming my understanding of Los Angeles and the placement of that megalopolis into my mindset. I’m still defining what it means to me. As much as I’ve come to love the city and begun to understand its layered intricacies, I am far from knowing it, from internalizing it the way I’ve internalized Portland.

And the thing is, i don’t know if I ever will, and not just because Los Angeles is such a massive place by comparison. It’s something deeper. When I am in Portland I feel little more than the now. Like the city, I’m not perfect when it comes to finding serenity, but, I think importantly, I don’t feel rushed to find it. In L.A., as I did in Ventura, I feel I’m constantly trying to get my footing. To get settled.

That divergence might be stronger now, when I feel myself trying to pack an entire life into a one-year graduate program, then find myself this week coming to understand perhaps more deeply than I ever have just what it means to be on vacation. I am aware there are thousands struggling to live in Portland. Thousands without the luxury I’ve had this week of time and loved ones and treasured friends with whom I can reconnect. Thousands standing at the precipice of an uncertain future, as there are across the world. But I also am finally at a point in my life where I’m finding it’s pointless to fight the way I feel about anything so I will savor this sensation.

This weekend, a couple days after I landed in Portland and first started forming these thoughts, I thought about what Portland and the other parts of Oregon that have been a part of my life really mean to me. In my life it has been not just a place of respite, but something of a transitional zone. A buffer. I move through lives here. Most of the major phases of my adult life have been book-ended by travels, sometimes quite literally, through the state. These journeys have been moments of re-centering, of rediscovery.

At many instances I find myself upon bridges traversing two sensations. I have rebuilt myself, found esoteric escapes and torn down shells of myself here even as I have simmered amid apprehension and self-doubt and pushed myself beyond my limits. When I’m here, I find myself chasing the faintest of distant lights and simultaneously fighting to stand firm against the over-exuberant facets of my personality. I find myself wandering through semi-charmed moments of surreality as if amid dreams yet feeling incredibly alert.

Again, I’m still here. My words still get tied, get excessive, they get me in trouble and go too far. Somehow, though, Somehow even if I resist, I know there is comfort and rest here. I know myself here. I can free myself, I can be myself here, whether the "here" is this moment, this place or neither.

Postscript:

I took a few moments to peruse the Web site of the Yesterday and Tomorrow store after I Googled its name. I didn't get too far, but I did notice this hilarious description of one category of their products.

"Our Gargoyles & Dragons are only visiting us, while they are waiting for just the right person and place to call home.  A few stay only a day and some are much more picky and stay a while. So we never know who will be here moment by moment, but it seems that as one moves out another moves in. There always seems to be a number underfoot. Big & Little, they come in all sizes, some like to be tucked in small places and some like to be the center of the show."